Green Options

Huw Irranca-Davies, the British Fisheries Minister has joined a list of actors, celebrities and activists demanding the Japanese restaurant Nobu stop serving the endangered bluefin tuna on their menus.

A new species of Samoan fruit bat or ‘flying fox’ was discovered at the Academy of Sciences in Philadelphia by Kristofer M. Helgen, a Research Zoologist and Curator of Mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Helgen, the lead author of the paper published in American Museum Novitates, noticed the bat within one hour of being on the premises of the Academy of Sciences. (There are about 17 million biological specimens housed at the Academy.)

University of Georgia researchers discovered a two inch long salamander near Toccoa, Georgia. It is reportedly the first discovery of a new four-footed species in the US in fifty years. 
It was in the spring of 2007 that the salamander was first discovered, but the details have not been published until this year, in the Journal of Zoology. The first one to be spotted was a female, and later the researchers returned to the creek area of the first discovery, and found a male.

The Auriga Leader, a Japanese owned NYK cargo ship capable of carrying 6,400 cars and using over 300 solar panels as part of its power supply was docked in Long Beach yesterday, and just departed. It is the first commerical cargo ship employing solar power technology to reduce diesel emissions. The solar panels can supply up to 15% of the vessel’s electrical power when docked. The ship will probably return to Long Beach in about [...]

A publication from the Botanical Insitute of India reported that over 100 new plant species were discovered in India. One hundred and thirty seven are new to science, and 30 were discovered in India for the first time. “The Indian flora is mainly concentrated in three major centres of diversity namely Himalayas, the Western Ghats and Andaman and Nicobar islands. The discoveries reflect the potential of the country’s plant heritage which is yet to be explored,”  said BSI director M Sanjappa.

University of Costa Rica scientists discovered a new species of frog in a mountainous region of their country. The frog is about 2 cm. in length and lives in the Altamira-Valle de Silencio area at an altitude of around 8,000 feet. The habitat there is rainforest with cool temperatures.
The frog was named Diasporus ventrimaculatus. Females are black and the males are orange, or grey. 

Bald eagles in both Michigan and Maine have been removed from the endangered species list.

Ohio state trooper cruisers are getting small solar panels to assist in the powering of their onboard equipment. 1,150 Ford Crown Victoria cruisers will get 5 watt solar panels to improve battery peformance and reduce fuel consumption.

» See also: Follow Feed-in-tariff solar legislation at 1bog.org
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The solar panels will help power the radio and other electronics when the cars’ engines are turned [...]

The US Federal Aviation Administration released a document as a companion to their
online wildlife strike database. The numbers for both the research document and the database could be off by 80%, as the website states only about 20% of wildlife strikes are reported. So the number of bird strikes and animal strikes could be much higher. (The data has been entered only up to Dec. 2008 perhaps due to collection difficulties).

The worst drought in 26 years is threatening the survival of a rare herd of desert elephants in Mali. A number have already died and more are struggling to survive. Save the Elephants is taking donations to help the elephants before they die.